Goliath

must have had a fight, but about what?

Alek picked up the newspaper, staring at the photograph of Dylan swinging from the Dauntless’s trunk. The wildcount had seen the story too, of course. He read every newspaper Barlow gave him from cover to cover.

“You know something you shouldn’t, don’t you, Volger?” Alek said quietly. “That’s why you and Dylan are fighting.”

“Fighting,” Bovril repeated thoughtfully. Then it crawled from Alek’s shoulder onto the bed.

Alek stared at the beast, recalling what had happened in the cargo bay. The creature had sat on Klopp’s shoulder all night, listening to everything, rolling words like “magnetism” and “electrikals” around in its mting.&. And then it had plucked Dr. Barlow’s necklace from her and demonstrated the purpose of the strange device.

That was how the beast’s perspicaciousness worked. It listened, then somehow drew everything together into a neat bundle.

Alek flipped the newspaper back to the first page, and began to read aloud. Bovril spoke up now and then, repeating new words happily, digesting it all.

. . . He surely has bravery running in his veins, being the nephew of an intrepid airman, one Artemis Sharp, who perished in a calamitous ballooning fire only a few years ago. The elder Sharp was posthumously awarded the Air Gallantry Cross for saving his daughter, Deryn, from the hungry flames of the conflagration.

Alek sat back up. He blinked away sleep, still staring at the words. His daughter, Deryn?

“Reporters.” Alek took a deep breath. It was amazing how they could get the simplest facts wrong. He’d explained to Malone several times that Ferdinand was his father’s middle name. And yet the man had referred to Alek as “Aleksandar Ferdinand” in several places, as if it were a family name!

“His daughter, Deryn,” Bovril repeated.

But why would anyone change a boy into a girl? And where had the unlikely name Deryn come from? Perhaps Malone had been misled by someone in Dylan’s family, to hide the fact that two brothers had entered the Air Service together.

But Dylan had said that was all a lie, hadn’t he?

So this Deryn had to do with the real family secret, the one Dylan refused to talk about.

For a moment Alek felt dizzy, and wondered if he should put down the paper and forget all about this, out of respect for Dylan’s wishes. He needed sleep.

But instead he read a little further. . . .

At the time of the tragic incident, the Daily Telegraph of London wrote, “And as the flames exploded overhead, the father cast his daughter from the tiny gondola, and in saving her life sealed his own fate.” Surely our brothers across the Atlantic are lucky to count brave men such as the Sharps among their airmen during this terrible war.

“Sealed his own fate,” Bovril said gravely.

Alek nodded slowly. So the mistake had been made two years ago, by a British paper, and had been merely copied by Malone. That had to be it. But why had the Telegraph made such an odd error?

A cold feeling went through Alek then. What if there really was a Deryn, and Dylan was lying about it all? What if the boy had only watched the accident, and had inserted himself into the story in his sister’s place?

Alek shook his head at this absurd idea. No one would embellish the story of his own father’s death. It had to be a simple mistake.

Then, why was Dylan lying to the Air Service about who his father was?

A strange feeling, almotiny gon kind of panic, was coming over Alek. It had to be exhaustion, compounded by this reporter’s odd mistake. How was he supposed to believe anything he read, when newspapers could get reality so completely wrong? Sometimes it felt as though the whole world were built on lies.

He lay down, forcing his eyes closed and willing his racing heart to slow down. The details of a years-old tragedy hardly mattered anymore. Dylan had seen his father die and his heart was still broken from it, of that Alek was sure. Perhaps the boy didn’t know himself what had happened on that terrible day.

Alek lay there for long minutes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Finally he opened his eyes and looked at Bovril. “Well, you’ve got all the facts now.”

The creature just stared up at him.

Alek waited another moment, then sighed. “You’re not going to help me with this mystery, are you? Of course you aren’t.”

He kicked off his boots and closed his eyes again, but his head was still spinning. He wanted more than anything to get some rest ahead of tonight’s skulking. But Alek could feel sleeplessness nestling in beside him, like an unwelcome visitor in the bed.

Then Bovril crept up beside his head, seeking warmth against the chill that pushed through the ship’s windowpanes.

“Mr. Deryn Sharp,” the creature whispered into his ear.

Tazza’s ears perked up. The beastie strained at his leash, pulling Deryn forward in the darkness of the gut. Just ahead of them a strange two-headed silhouette was emerging from gloom.

“Mr. Sharp,” came a familiar voice, and Deryn smiled. It was only Bovril, riding on Alek’s shoulder.

Tazza leaned back onto his haunches and bounced with excitement as the two approached. Bovril chuckled a bit at the sight, but Alek didn’t look happy. He was staring at Deryn, his eyes hollow.

“Did you not get any sleep?” she asked.

“Not much.” He knelt to pet the thylacine. “I looked in your cabin. Newkirk said you’d be here.”

“Aye, this is Tazza’s favorite place for a walk,” Deryn said. The great airbeast’s gut was where all the organic matter of the ship came together to be processed and separated into energy-making sugars, hydrogen, and waste. “I think he likes the smells.”

“Mr. Newkirk seemed quite at home there,” Alek said.

Deryn sighed. “It’s his cabin too now. We’re short of bunks for the next few days. Still, it’s better than back when there were three of us middies to a cabin.”

Alek frowned, his gaze lingering on her again. Even in the faint wormlight of the great airbeast’s gut, his face looked pale.

“Are you all right, Alek? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“My head’s been spinning, I suppose.”

“It’s not just you. Since meeting with that Clanker boffin, the officers have been as twitchy as a box of crickets. What in blazes did Tesla say in there?”

Alek paused a moment, still giving her the strange look. “He claims that he destroyed that forest himself. He has a weapon of some kind in America, called Goliath. It’s much bigger than the one we tore down in Istanbul, and he wants to end the war with it.”

“He said he . . . w-with a what?” Deryn sputtered.

“It’s like a Tesla cannon, which he says can set the air on fire anywhere in the world. Now that he’s seen firsthand what it can do, he wants to use it to force the Clankers to surrender.”

Deryn blinked. The boy had said the words so simply, as if repeating a duty roster, but they hardly made sense.

“Surrender,” Bovril said. “Mr. Sharp.”

“A barking weapon did all that?” She could recall with perfect clarity the night of the battle with the Goeben, when the Tesla cannon’s lightning had spread across the Leviathan’s skin, threatening to set the whole ship aflame. An astonishing sight, but a fly’s fart compared to the destruction here in Siberia.